


Up From the Dust

by Giddygeek



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Fix-It, Happily Ever After, Just FIX IT ftlog, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e13: The Seam, because real life is hard, but with a HEA because why NOT, deliberately as dumb as the show, it's 2k19 and we should have more HEA in fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 02:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18511714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giddygeek/pseuds/Giddygeek
Summary: Margo and Josh get married the next winter.ORI had to do it. I wasn't going to, but I had to: I wrote a fix-it to tie up a loose end that's been making me wild all season, and untied another end while I was at it.





	Up From the Dust

**Author's Note:**

> I don't love the S4 finale. I have a lot of feelings about it. I might or might not write something else along these lines, but I had a DM from a friend which made me think of this first, and, well. Not a lot of impulse control today.
> 
> This is not beta read. If you find a typo, let me know. 
> 
> Title is from Mumford & Sons, The Wild.

Margo married Josh in Central Park in the late afternoon. The soft, December sunlight came low and sideways through the trees. It sparkled off the unseasonably-early snow which had fallen the night before. 

Eliot walked beside Margo through the trees. Guests dressed in white and cream lined their winding path: Kady and Alice, holding hands; Fen, teary-eyed; Zelda, almost unrecognizable in her civilian attire, but it wasn't like she had the Library to dress for anymore; a dozen hedges; the surviving students of Brakebills. 

Julia, Penny, and the horomancer, Stoppard, were off cleaning up the damage to the threads of the timelines they'd tangled when they'd destroyed almost everyone's books. They’d sent a gift: the stuffed pony from Margo’s childhood, rescued from the detritus of the past. Margo had hugged it to her chest with wondering eyes, until Eliot had made fun of her for being a horse girl. He'd gotten a kick to the ankle for his troubles.

Even Todd had recovered enough to attend. His arm was still in a magical cast and he had a rakish scar on his cheek—the fight to save the hedges hadn’t been easy. It had left marks. Eliot had his own wounds healing slowly under the black linen and brocade of his suit. He inclined his head slightly and Todd nodded back as they swept past him, into the clearing where Josh waited.

Josh had found a cream and gold suit from somewhere; maybe Fillorian, judging by the cut. He looked surprisingly trim and elegant, even as he fidgeted, anxious. He stilled when he saw Margo coming through the trees to him, her eyes locked on his. 

Eliot leaned down as they walked through the fresh snow. “You still have time to back out, Bambi,” he said—perhaps too loudly, judging by the way Alice ducked her head and smiled behind her hair.

Margo didn’t take her eyes off Josh. She just dug her silver-painted nails into Eliot’s arm—right over the still-healing tattoo they’d used for the incendiary spell’s binding, the bitch—and dragged him forward.

Eliot smiled a little. He’d been telling Margo the same thing all week—ever since they’d slid out from under the closing Library door with seconds to spare—and it hadn’t even slowed her down. Not once. 

The Library had almost trapped them. They’d flopped on their backs and panted, bleeding all over the place while the sound of explosions echoed behind them.

Margo had looked at Josh’s hands—wrapped around one of her ankles and one of Eliot’s, hairy and wolfed-out but so gentle as he pulled them to safety. She’d sat up, pulled Josh to her by his furry sideburns and kissed him: a ferocious kiss that made Josh flail, squeaking like a puppy.

Then she had pushed him back, the neck of his sweater held tight in her hands, and said, “I’m going to _marry_ you, Josh. _Thank_ you.” 

Eliot had said later, when they were alone and she was helping him magically stitch up the worst of his wounds, “Is marrying him _really_ necessary?” 

“When you find a cute boy with good hands who you can keep on a leash, you do whatever’s _necessary_ to _keep him_ ,” Margo had snapped. Then she blanched, hissing a sharp _fuck_ under her breath.

Eliot had laughed and kissed her temple—even though it hurt to move—to show her that he was all right. Then he stitched the rest of the gash on his side himself, careful not to make a sound. 

She was right, of course. He’d learned that lesson too late, but very, very well. 

Josh waited for them under a snow-covered tree. His brother stood beside him as best man—his completely mundane brother, under a light enchantment so that he wouldn’t notice the more magical elements of the wedding—and Dean Fogg stood on his other side, a white ribbon in his hands

Margo had wanted to be walked down the aisle, such as it was, but not given away. Eliot stopped in the middle of the clearing. He turned to her, brushed her hair back from her temples, kissed her brow under the gleaming white gold and pearls of her tiara—a gift from Fen. He said, “Be happy, Margo. Or I’ll kick his ass.”

She leaned into his chest. “Oh, I’m gonna,” she said. She looked up into his eyes, and her own were fierce: joyful and smug and ferocious, all at once. “And when I’m done, I’m gonna find a way to get you to happy, too, El. You hear me? I’m _not_ giving up—”

“Never thought you would, darling,” he said. He squeezed her tight for a moment. Then he turned and walked away, to stand on Dean Fogg’s other side and watch Margo—ice princess, high king, light of his life—hold her chin up high, twitch her sparkling dress into place, and march towards her happily-ever-after. 

#

The party ran late, of course. Margo and Eliot had conned their way into having the reception at the fancy boathouse in the park: it had meant cancelling someone else’s wedding, scamming the management, and putting a glamour over the entire building, but why not? Why the fuck not? Nothing in life was guaranteed, and they hadn’t done anything they couldn’t make up for—

Margo found the bride and shook her hand, bespelled her wedding ring with a minor good luck charm, and their glamour fixed some maintenance problems that had been plaguing the boathouse, including a rat that Eliot was fairly confident was a dragon's spy—

So they cheated, but left the people and places they’d cheated a little better off than they’d been before. Why the fuck not. 

Eliot ate—Josh had micromanaged the catering, added a few Fillorian elements on the sly—and drank, too much, and danced. The snow gleamed outside the windows, and lanterns gleamed inside them. Margo laughed, her hands held up high, her head thrown back. Josh stole star-struck glances at her while their guests twirled around them. It was a good night, and it went on forever. 

Afterward, Eliot went back to the apartment alone. Everyone else had scattered: Kady and Alice with the hedges; the Brakebills students back to the campus, where Eliot only went in short bursts anymore, since Dean Fogg had honorarily graduated the remains of his class; the rest of the guests here and there.

Margo had fretted about him not staying at the hotel—“Penthouse suite!” she said, holding his face in her hands. “I won’t be there for your freaky werewolf shenanigans,” he’d said, with dignity. “Call me when that…whole thing…is over, and not a second before, okay?”—but it was more than just the werewolf sex, of course. He’d just wanted to be alone. Which was a completely healthy and normal thing to want. 

The silence of the apartment echoed around him. He shrugged off his long, sweeping coat, and his thick, high-collared suit jacket. He loosened his cravat. He poured himself a tumbler of whiskey and brought the bottle with him as he lit the fireplace, slumped into a chair to watch the flames dance while he drank.

Completely healthy and normal. 

One drink turned to two, to three and four. His tolerance was still shit. The monster had been sober for longer than Eliot had been since he was a teenager, and they’d been plunged right into the battle for the Library before he could spend enough time getting as gloriously smashed as he needed. The apartment was warm and quiet, and he hadn’t been sleeping well, not for years. He blinked, and the tumbler rolled gently out of his hand as he dozed off in the dark.

#

_Quentin._

_Turning to him in a sunlit glade. Older, wearing the homespun clothes of Fillory. His mouth sternly pursed, but his eyes laughing._

_The day they’d met, young and bewildered—both of them struggling, although Eliot would never had admitted it. Quentin following him like a puppy while Eliot dragged him across the Brakebills campus: showing off for him, hoping for him to stay._

_“—I don’t say magic is real, but I do seduce you, and lift your spirits that life retains its sparkle for decades—”_

_Sitting beside him in Whitespire, that damned letter in his hand, the taste of peaches on Eliot’s tongue. Quentin wiping away a tear while Eliot made the biggest mistake of his life._

_Dead._

The fire crackled. Eliot, lost and dreaming, cried out. 

One of the men sitting across from him jerked, as if he would have gone to Eliot, to comfort him. The other put a restraining hand on his arm.

“First rule of Christmas,” Nick said. “Don’t wake the kids up. Breaks the magic.”

“He’s not exactly a kid.”

“Doesn’t change the magic,” Nick said. He took his pipe out of his vest pocket and flicked his thumb; the pipe lit, homey smell mingling with the smell of the fire, the whiskey. “Wait.”

#

Eliot woke slowly. His head hurt. His chest hurt—he wasn’t healed enough to be sleeping in—where was he sleeping? With one leg dangling over the edge of the couch in Marina’s stupidly-large living room. His left arm was awkwardly pinned between his chest and the cushions, pulling at his injured side. Gray light filtered through the curtains. The room was cold—the fire had gone out, maybe hours ago, in the night.

A man stood with his elbow leaning against the mantel: lean, black, with short gray stubble on his hair and face. He wore a red cardigan and puffed smoke from a pipe. Judging by the smell of the room, he’d been puffing it for a while. He raised his eyebrows at Eliot and smiled around the stem of the pipe. 

And. 

And across from Eliot, sitting in one of Marina’s hideous minimalist chairs, his elbows on his knees, sat Quentin. 

When Eliot met his gaze, he let out a huff of breath and straightened. He ran his hands through his hair in an old nervous gesture that Eliot remembered—that Eliot tracked like his life depended on memorizing it. He said, quietly, “Hey, El. Uh. Merry Christmas?”

Eliot sat up slowly. His whole body hurt: war wounds, hangover, tension, _Quentin_.

“You’ve been real good this year, kid,” the man with him said to Eliot. He tapped his pipe into the ashes, refilled it. “I brought you everything on the list. Don’t do much of _that_ these days.”

Quentin winced. “Yeah,” he said, in response to the look on Eliot’s face. “This is Nick. Saint Nick. Uh, Santa Claus.”

The man shook his head, a gentle frown creasing his face. “Now, I’ve told you I don’t like those other names so much. Nick will do.”

Eliot had obviously lost his mind. A year of grief and fighting—a year of possession, and _then_ a year of grief and fighting—and seeing Margo married off to the weird love of her life, and—he’d just clearly gone around the bend. Nothing made sense, except the one thing that made sense: that he’d lost his goddamned mind, _finally_.

“Santa,” he said quietly, to himself. “With my present. My gift for being a _good boy_.” He stood, arm wrapped around his own torso to hold himself together. He towered over Quentin and Santa, which didn’t seem to intimidate Santa—Nick—but made Q sit back in his seat, chin tipped up. His eyes flickered between Eliot and Nick. 

Eliot said, very cold and gentle, “But I didn’t make a list.”

“You didn’t,” Nick agreed. “But Alice did, and I owe her a thing or two.” He tapped his pipe again, cleared his throat. “Good girl, Alice. Fine hand with a cockroach.”

Eliot stared at him, then glanced back at Quentin. They looked and sounded and _smelled_ so real. Maybe the monster had left something behind inside him after all; some little fragment of itself, a tumor that was now making Eliot hallucinate, or a shred of the monster’s soul that was torturing him for its own amusement. “Alice isn’t here,” he said, and turned away. 

Quentin stood. “Wait,” he said, and put a hand on Eliot’s arm. 

Eliot froze. He looked down. Quentin’s hand clenched into a fist. His fingers were tight and pale against the black cloth of Eliot’s sleeve. Eliot could feel the warmth of Quentin’s skin—warmth that didn’t exist anymore, that he couldn’t be feeling, because Quentin was dead, because Quentin had sacrificed himself in the dumbest way possible at the worst moment, and—

“It’s really me, Eliot,” Quentin said. He looked up at Eliot. “Nick’s a Traveler. He had one of the few books from the Library left in the world, which the Underworld—well, they need all the books they can get now that the Library is, uh. A black hole, I guess.”

“The book return at the end of the universe. No Library means I don’t care who knows where I am,” Nick said. He smiled. “Though usually people only track me one night a year, anyway.”

“Right,” Eliot said, heavy with sarcasm. “So you just gave your book to the Underworld for me. Sure.”

Quentin shook his head. “Not just _gave_. He owed Alice, so when she sent her letter, when she made her list, uh. He made a deal.”

“Freedom from prosecution,” Nick said. “Next Christmas is going to be—well, be nice, and you’ll see.”

Eliot swallowed heavily. Alice asked, and Santa made a deal. “If it’s really you, and if this story is true, why are you here?” he asked. He looked back at Quentin’s hand. “I told you, Alice is off with Kady and the hedges somewhere. She hasn’t stayed here for six months, at least. Since she and Kady….” 

He trailed off. If this _was_ Quentin, and not a hallucination, Eliot wasn’t going to be the one to break the news of Alice and Kady’s relationship to him. He couldn’t. It would stain his attempts to—it would get in the way of his efforts to—

His breath had started to quicken. His heart raced. Quentin’s hand slid up his arm, and Eliot watched it until he couldn’t anymore, until he had to look into Quentin’s face. Quentin’s face, tipped back, as Quentin looked up at him with aching softness. 

Quentin said, quietly, “Alice asked Nick to bring me to you—” and Eliot broke, he _broke_ , he—

He reached out and grabbed Quentin, dragged him in close and tight. The shape of Quentin slotting instantly into place against Eliot’s chest, solid and so _real_.

For the first time in a long while, Eliot felt truly aware of his own body. He had changed, maybe more than Quentin had. He _felt_ thin, stretched, weak, although he was mostly recovered. He felt cold against Quentin’s warmth, as if _he_ had been the one to die.

“Eliot, El,” Quentin said. He put a hand on Eliot’s cheek and Eliot realized he hadn’t shaved for the wedding. No wonder Margo had tsked at him. How bad were things that she hadn’t cursed him out and demanded he go find a razor? Quentin said, “Shh, shh,” thumb swiping under his eye, because Eliot had started to cry. Tears slid down his cheeks and caught on the corners of his mouth.

“How dare you,” Eliot said, low and raw with pent-up sorrow, with rage, with desperate gladness. “Quentin, how dare you, when I—”

“I know,” Quentin said. He smiled up at Eliot. His own mouth trembled.

Eliot shook him. “You couldn’t _possibly_ know,” he said. There wasn’t—there was no way to tell him, there was no way to summarize all his time in his happy place, the year since Quentin had died, none of it. It couldn’t be done, so he didn’t try. He just bent his head, and kissed Quentin. 

He caught Quentin’s surprised gasp—as if Quentin hadn’t been sure this was where the moment would lead, what an _idiot_ , dead or alive he was the sweetest, most _absurd_ —and Eliot chased Quentin’s breath through the kiss, holding Quentin tight against him.

Behind them, Nick cleared his throat. 

“Well,” he said, when they looked at him, Eliot still holding Quentin so tight that Q couldn’t turn and had to crane his neck. Nick smiled and waved his hand, which held—oh for fuck’s sake, a sprig of mistletoe—“I guess you won’t be needing this,” Nick said smugly. “It’s charmed, though, good for—staying power, shall we say—should I leave it?”

“No, no,” Quentin said, embarrassed flush on his cheeks. 

But Eliot said over him, to Nick, “ _Yes_ , leave it, _leave it_ ,” and to Quentin, “I might not let you come for _a long time_ , you _asshole_ —” and Quentin swallowed heavily. His eyes went wide and dark.

“Well then,” Nick said. “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fu—” He touched the mantel, and was gone.

Eliot and Quentin stood in front of the cold fireplace for an awkward, silent moment. Two years, Eliot thought. Two years. It was nothing, it was forever, it was too long to wait when nothing was guaranteed; nothing, not even the next _minute_.

“So, uh,” Quentin said. He licked his lips, nervous. “Alice’s list had some stuff, she mentioned that Margo was getting married on Christmas Eve, and—uh, how was that, I’m sorry I missed—”

“I love you, Quentin,” Eliot said. He turned his body, using one of the moves Todd had taught him—Todd’s childhood karate lessons had paid weirdly big dividends in the Library fight—and knocked Quentin down onto the couch. 

Quentin’s breath huffed out of him, and then Eliot dropped down on top of him. Eliot braced his elbows on either side of Quentin’s shoulders, one of them half-sliding off the couch cushions. He held himself just high enough for Quentin to catch a slow breath while Eliot tangled his fingers in Quentin’s hair. 

“It’s going to take me a long time to tell you how much,” Eliot said. He looked into Quentin’s soft, smiling eyes. “A _long_ time. So shut up so I can get _started_ ,” and he kissed Quentin again.

“That’s not talking,” Quentin said, dazed, when Eliot let him up for breath. “Also, your stubble hurts. I’m not kidding. I’ve told you before that it burns when it’s this length, Eliot.”

Eliot snorted. “I’ll shave when I’m done with you. When I’m—when—a _leash_ ,” he said viciously, which might not have made sense to Quentin out of context—or maybe it did because he just breathed hard, and looked up at Eliot, and held onto Eliot’s arms while Eliot bent down and kissed him and _kissed_ him, and didn’t let him go.


End file.
